On Our Radar

On Our Radar

GoPro’s Rocket Ride a Sign of a Top?

GoPro (GPRO) gave back lots of gains in trading Wednesday after more than doubling in the four prior trading sessions. The stock has soared 103% since its initial public offering last week at $24 a share.

Continue Reading Below

But it nosedived in Wednesday trading, a correction so sharp it tripped a Nasdaq circuit breaker.

Before Wednesday’s market action, the wearable video camera maker caught a sweet bid during one of the hottest periods for public issuances in 14 years, an IPO market performance that hasn’t been this strong since 2000, during the dotcom boom, according to Renaissance Capital.

GoPro’s $6 billion equity valuation clocked in at a 100 times its $61 million in annual earnings--a rich multiple. That market cap topped the equity valuations for big companies with lots of productive, hard assets, including U.S. Steel, Peabody Energy, Cablevision, Owens-Illinois, even financials like Legg Mason or Hudson City Bancorp, says Rich Peterson, director of global markets intelligence at S&P Capital IQ (see below for the full list).

But there’s always a silver lining for GoPro. Peterson notes, tongue in cheek, that “with its $138 billion in cash, Apple could buy GoPro (with cash to spare), attach it to its Beats acquisition ($3 billion for the headphone maker) and merge the iPhone with the Dr. Dre headphones plus the camera.”

Before today’s gut-clenching action, GoPro’s $6 billion market cap was better than the stock valuations for these established companies below, and was closing in on Nikon Corp.’s market value of $6.3 billion: